Being agnostic and envying believers who are certain of their afterlife.

Finding yourself stroking the forehead of a sister-in-law you never got along with when she was on her deathbed.

Those were just a few of the topics covered at the death cafe held last weekend at the Black Dog coffee shop in St. Paul's Lowertown.

Death cafes are an international movement started about 10 years ago by Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz. Participants gather, typically in a coffee shop, to hold a free-ranging conversation about the often taboo subject of death. There are now about 450 of them worldwide.

It's not a grief-support or counseling session, but rather a discussion group, a sort of mortality salon, according to deathcafe.com.

The object is "to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives," according to the website.

And, typically, there are treats. The website continues, "At a death cafe, people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death."

"The idea is food and drink is kind of life sustaining and life affirming," said Stacy Remke, the organizer of the Black Dog death cafe.

Death cafes started in the Twin Cities last year. Anna Lee Roberts, a St.

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Paul hospice music therapist, organized the first death cafe in this area in May at the Common Roots Cafe in Minneapolis.

"Talking about death has become so taboo, and yet we really need it," Roberts said. "It proved an opportunity for people who want to talk about death to do it in an environment where it's accepted."

Since then, as many as 50 people have shown up for death cafe meetings in the Twin Cities, Roberts said.

The one last weekend at the Black Dog was intended to kick off a regular monthly meeting at the coffee shop and wine bar on the second Sunday of each month, said Remke, a social worker and faculty member at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work.

"It really is a celebration of life," said meeting facilitator Kathleen Moore to the seven people seated at a round table in the coffee shop as the two-hour session began.

"I want to help people to be less afraid," Remke said.

But it was clear that several of the participants were at least a bit apprehensive of what one person described as the "gaping maw of mortality."

"I'm losing friends at an increasingly rapid rate. It makes you think," said Jon Jacka, 77.

"I'm 71. I'm more concerned about mortality," said Bill Henry.

"Death is something more in my face," said his wife, Diane Henry.

An agnostic, Bill Henry said, "I find myself being jealous of those who have a firm belief."

"When I'm trying to imagine not being in this world, it kind of blows my mind," Remke said. She compared death to a jump from a high diving board, an act which filled her with dread as a child, even though she's a good swimmer.

A 38-year-old participant talked about the traumatic moment when he was 16 and saw his mother's dead body.

"It was nightmarish. I had horrible nightmares for years," he said.

"Death in itself is ugly, because we value life," Moore said.

But she said watching a pet dog die helped her to accept the inevitable.

"I was looking at Ian's eyes, and I saw the moment he left," she said. "I don't know why, but that made me feel OK. It was OK after that."

The conversation meandered from friends and relatives who have died to how children seem to handle their own mortality with grace to chaos theory to health care directives.

At the end of the discussion, one participant, who only wanted to be identified as Elinor, said, "Talking about death and dying can help me live better."